Capt.
Brian Udell fought back panic. Stranded in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
with 5-foot waves and 17 mph winds making the 60 degree water feel like
a giant ice chest, he knew he was in trouble. Udell had no life preserver,
an injury rendered his left arm useless, and it was a pitch-black night.
With his one good arm, he desperately clung to the side of a partially inflated
life raft.

His situation quickly worsened.

Salt water made him painfully aware of open wounds - gashes,
cuts and scrapes - scattered over his broken body. The thought of his blood
pouring into the sea and inviting sharks to a late dinner sent another kind
of chill up his spine. Newly motivated, he kicked his legs to assist his
one good arm.

More bad news.

Udell's lower limbs, from his left ankle and right knee
down, felt as though they were barely attached. Seemingly held loosely together
only by the skin, they proved useless as paddles - trailing lifelessly behind
the upper portion of his legs. Kicking them through the water was like trying
to stir a glass of ice tea with a wet noodle. Thoughts of death started
to infiltrate his mind.

Udell began to pray...

by Tech. Sgt. Timothy P. Barela
photos by Master Sgt. Dave Nolan

April 18, Capt. Brian Udell, an F-15E fighter pilot from
Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, will acknowledge the second anniversary
of that fateful day. There will be no celebration, because he lost a friend
and coworker - weapons systems officer Capt. Dennis White. Yet on that bitter-sweet
night, Udell miraculously survived one of the fastest known ejections in
history at more than 780 mph.

But exposing his virtually unprotected body to supersonic
speeds had its price. And Udell's story is incredible.

Assigned to Seymour-Johnson AFB, N.C., at the time, Udell
and White took off at about 8:45 p.m. in a four-ship formation. The F-15E's
were to fly out over the Atlantic, split into two groups and engage each
other as simulated friendly and enemy forces - part of routine training.

"Two of us would head north, and two of us would head
south," Udell said, simulating the route of the aircraft with his hands.
"Then we'd turn around and come at each other like we were in a jousting
match."

Actually, at night, the aircraft used radar to ensure they'd
never come dangerously close to each other. At a predetermined distance,
they would turn around, head back and do it all over again. Udell and White
were in one of those turns when their tragic saga began.

"I was reading my heads-up display, and it showed
me in a 60-degree turn with my nose tilted 10 degrees down and going 400
knots at 24,000 feet. Perfect," Udell said. "But as we're in this
turn, I start hearing a wind rush - sort of like the sound you hear when
you're increasing your speed down the highway and have to turn up your radio.
But in a jet, this kind of wind rush usually comes when you're accelerating
in excess of 500 knots."

"I flipped on the electronic attitude direction indicator,"
the 33-year-old Udell said. "It tells you if you're going up or down,
making a right or left turn, going upside down or rightside up, how fast
you're going, and what altitude you're at. And it says I'm headed straight
for the earth at about 600 knots [nearly 700 mph]."

Because he didn't know which set of instruments was telling
the truth, Udell moved the stick back and forth to feel the response of
the airplane. The heads-up display stayed the same. The other display changed.
That meant the second set of instruments functioned properly. It also meant
they were screaming toward earth like a giant lawn dart.

"By this time we were just above 10,000 feet, and
exceeding 600 knots," Udell said. "When we do our preflight briefs,
we talk about 10,000 feet being the minimum altitude we go before ejecting
out of an out-of-control aircraft, and 600 knots is the maximum speed for
a safe ejection in the ACES II ejection seat. So I had to make a quick decision.
With it being pitch black and having no horizon to work with, I gave the
order: 'Bail out! Bail out! Bail out!' "

Traveling at 1,200 feet per second - faster than a lot
of rifle bullets - by the time the canopy blew off, White ejected at 4,500
feet. With the aircraft still picking up speed - more than 780 mph - Udell
ejected at 3,000 feet.

"I made the decision to bail out at 10,000 feet, got
into good position and pulled the handles at 6,000 feet, left the aircraft
at 3,000 feet, and got my parachute at just under 1,000 feet. All that happened
in a matter of a few seconds," he said, taking a deep breath. "So
if you crunch the numbers, I had about a half second to spare.

"If I'd waited for more than a half second, I would
have impacted the water still in the seat," he added, clapping his
hands together in a sobering smack that echoed through the room.

As Udell floated to earth at the end of a parachute, he
couldn't remember pounding into those granite-hard shock waves as his unarmored
body pierced the sonic wall. Those three seconds that sent all 190 pounds
of him hurtling at a supersonic velocity appear mercifully lost forever.

"I don't know if it was because of the trauma my body
went through or the terror of 'Holy s-, this is happening,' " he said,
his eyes widening. "But I'm glad I don't remember punching out."

Slowly descending, Udell felt as though he'd been hit by
a train. Had anyone seen him at that moment, they might have agreed.

His helmet and oxygen mask had been ripped from his head,
and his earplugs snatched from his ears. His gloves and watch also were
torn off. All his pens and flight suit patches were gone. His wallet and
a water bottle had blasted through the bottom of his G-suit pockets, with
the zippers still closed. Underneath his flight suit, his T-shirt looked
as though someone had taken a razor blade and shredded it. And the laces
on his boots were imbedded into the leather.

Udell felt some pain, but had no clue to the extent of
his injuries. He began going through his post-ejection checklist.

"First you check the parachute canopy to make sure
it's deployed properly," said Udell, who credits much of his survival
to Air Force life support, egress, buddy care and survival training. "But
since it was too dark to see and I wasn't dropping like a rock, I figured
it must be OK. Next you make sure your visor and oxygen mask are off. That
was no problem, since my entire helmet had been blown off in the ejection."

Then he attempted to inflate his life preserver, but found
it shredded. He figured he'd better reel in the life raft that automatically
deploys during ejection to ensure he had some kind of flotation device when
entering the water. That's when he discovered his left arm was injured.
He hauled in the raft with his right arm and his teeth.

"Just about the time I got my hand on the raft, I
hit the water," Udell said.

His struggle to get into the raft began.

He'd been trained in different techniques to board the
one-man boat, but that had been under the assumption he'd have four good
limbs. He was down to one - and even that one had been dislocated and somehow
popped back into place. He made several unsuccessful attempts, before he
simply stopped and started praying.

"This was no put-your-hands-together-and-bow-your-head-praying,"
Udell said candidly. "This was face-to-face, 'Hey, God, I need your
help' kind of praying."

He gave it one more try, and somehow managed to inch his
way onto the raft. Sitting in the rubber boat, he had his right leg straight
out in front of him. But from the knee down, it involuntarily dangled at
a 90-degree angle over the right side of the vessel. With his right arm
he grabbed his lower leg and jerked it into the raft. It flopped 180 degrees
over his left leg with his upper right leg still pointed forward. He adjusted
it until the entire limb aligned in the same direction. Then he did the
same for his left ankle, which had been bent totally backwards.

"There was just nothing holding them together,"
he said, shaking his head. "Even the skin had stretched out."

Once he had immobilized his legs and his left arm, Udell
searched his 6-foot-1 frame for other injuries. Finding nothing that appeared
life-threatening, he went into prevent-shock mode. He drank some water out
of an emergency pack that automatically releases during ejection, then tried
to get warm.

"When the raft deploys, only the main donut ring inflates,"
he explained. "You have to manually inflate the bottom and the side
spray shields. Without the bottom inflated, I'm still sitting in the water,
and without the sides, the wind and waves crash over me. At that point,
I'm chilled to the bone, and the cold bothered me more than my injuries."

Udell began to inflate the bottom of the raft.

"But when I first put the tube in my mouth and tried
to blow, I couldn't create a seal around the tube," he said. "I
reached up and touched my face for the first time. It felt like a dish of
Playdough. My lips were especially deformed. The blood vessels in my face
had burst under the pressure of the slip stream, and my whole face was swollen.
It had no definition."

Despite his desperate situation, he had to laugh. He envisioned
himself looking like Mush Mouth from the cartoon Fat Albert.

"I stuck the tube back in my mouth," he said,
still chuckling. "The only way I could get a seal around it was to
hold the tube with my teeth and clamp my hand down around my lips. My lips
fit into the first three fingers of my hand, so they were out there pretty
far."

Despite getting a head-rush like he'd blown up a couple
hundred party balloons, Udell inflated the bottom of the raft, then the
spray shields, until he had formed a floating pup tent - his own little
cocoon. And after bailing out water with plastic bags from his survival
kit, he finally began to warm.

"I was exhausted and wanted to sleep, but was afraid
I'd never wake up again," he said.

Meanwhile, the three other F-15E crews, who hadn't discovered
right away that one of their $40 million aircraft now sat at the bottom
of the Atlantic Ocean, incredibly had managed to pinpoint the crash site
within two miles based on the last communications from the craft. The Coast
Guard was on the way.

Even though his bulging lips could barely form the syllables,
Udell kept hollering, "Dennis!" ... No answer. He also thought
of his wife, Kristi, who was four months pregnant with their first child.

Udell spent four hours in the water before a Coast Guard
helicopter found him. Using an emergency radio, he directed them to his
location.

"But I asked them not to get too close, because I
didn't want the rotor wash to knock me out of the raft," he said.

Aviation Survivalman 2nd Class Jim Peterson fished Udell
out of the raft and into a litter.

"He was in a lot of pain, but he just bit his lip
and dealt with it," Peterson said. "I even bumped his legs with
my flippers a few times while dragging him to the litter, but he never complained.
For being all busted up, he was a very strong man."

Actually, Udell admitted that he weakened so much that
he had trouble pushing the radio button. And now cold struck again.

"When he [Peterson] secured me in the litter, the
helicopter flew overhead and lowered the winch. I felt like I was in a typhoon,"
Udell said. "The rotors kicked up the wind and waves, and it felt like
needles were hitting me. But worse yet, the rotors acted as a giant air
conditioner, giving me another big chill. As they're hauling me up, the
basket starts spinning, until finally they pull me aboard. I owe those guys
a lot."

Once in the helicopter, the Coast Guard rescue crew rushed
the downed pilot to the nearest hospital in Wilmington, N.C.

"When I arrived at the hospital, it seemed like 20
or 30 doctors and nurses surrounded me," Udell said. "Within seconds
I was buck naked, and they were taking all kinds of X-rays. And all I could
think about was that good ol' mom advice, 'Make sure you have clean underwear,
because you never know when you'll be in an accident.' "

Soon an orthopedic surgeon walks in. He looks at the X-ray.
"Right knee dislocated. Left ankle broken. Left arm dislocated,"
the doctor said.

"I'm thinking, 'All right, pain medication,' "
Udell said wistfully. "But without a hi, hello or how are you, that
doctor walks up to me, grabs my right knee, and POP! He snaps it back into
place. I start screaming. Then he goes to my left ankle, POP! I'm screaming
even louder. Then he takes my left arm, POP!"

In agony, Udell hadn't received pain medication because
the medical team hadn't determined the extent of his injuries. Doctors finally
administered morphine, and he slipped into a happy place.

Kristi Udell arrived in the hospital emergency room just
as her husband began wailing in anguish. The doctor explained to her what
was happening.

"When I saw him, he looked vaguely familiar,"
Kristi said, shuddering at the thought. "His face was puffed up to
the size of a basketball, and he had a gash that went across his eye."

"How do I look?" he asked.

"Great," she lied.

He actually looked so beat up she was afraid to touch him
for fear of hurting him more. In addition to his mangled face and broken
and dislocated limbs, he had a gash across his chest and a cracked rib.
The back of his right thigh also had been ripped open, leaving a nasty scar.
Both arms had turned a grotesque black and blue, and various other scrapes,
cuts and bruises maligned his body.

As bad as he looked though, Kristi felt relieved. Brian
was alive.

During his first few hours in the hospital, the Udells
found out White hadn't been so lucky. He'd been killed instantly from the
violent force of the ejection.

"That was the most depressing time for me," Udell
said, still choking up at the memory. "I'd held up pretty good until
then. But when I found out Dennis was dead, I just lost it. He left behind
a wife and two kids."

Doctors gave Udell additional morphine to help him sleep.
Unfortunately, the drug caused him to dream.

"I dreamt someone jumped on my leg, and the thought
made me jerk," he said, bringing his knee up in a reenactment. "I
didn't realize it, but my left knee popped back out of socket." Because
his leg was already in a cast, it wasn't until three days later when he
transferred to a medical facility at Camp Lejeune, a Marine air station
in North Carolina, that doctors found the knee dislocated once again.

"My kneecap was swollen to the size of a cantaloupe
and laid over to the side kind of funny," Udell said. His tendons and
ligaments had been torn apart, so nothing held his knee in place. It snapped
out of joint three more times before they managed to cast it again.

After the swelling went
down, two titanium rods had to be temporarily inserted into the knee to
help hold it in place and keep it immobilized for about a month.

Four surgeries later and with six stainless steel screws
in each leg, Udell began intensive physical therapy and his trek to walk
and maybe even fly again. By his 32nd birthday, June 5, 1995, nearly two
months after the accident, he took his first step.

"I didn't want to just lie around," Udell said.
"I'd get in my wheelchair and wheel myself down to physical therapy
every morning and work out for about an hour. Then I'd do the same thing
in the afternoon. By the time I wheeled myself back to my hospital room
that evening, I was exhausted and would go right to sleep."

For months, Udell increased his rehabilitation workouts
until he was riding a bike, lifting weights, doing water exercises and other
various muscle-building routines eight to 10 hours a day. By the sixth month,
he felt he was ready to fly again, something nobody had thought possible.

"Some people get depressed when going through the
slow rehabilitation process," said Kriquette Alexander, senior program
director for the Goldsboro, N.C., YMCA where Udell performed much of his
rehab. "But Brian was an inspiration to everyone. He pushed himself
and was very focused. He's a cool critter."

Even after so much progress, a skeptical medical board
still had to be convinced that he was ready to fly again.

"They took me and a 'healthy' guy out to an airplane
to demonstrate an emergency ground egress out of the aircraft," Udell
said smugly. "We had to pretend the aircraft was on fire, unstrap,
jump overboard and run 50 yards away. They timed us both. I beat the other
guy by 10 seconds."

After going through a battery of tests and getting waivers
for the screws he'd carry in is limbs for the rest of his life, Udell flew
again for the first time in February '96 - 10 months after the crash.

On his second flight, he soared back over the same area
where he crashed.

"I was just so excited to get back in the cockpit,
I didn't have time to get scared," said Udell, whose father, retired
Air Force Col. Maurice Udell, taught him to fly when he was 9. "I just
love to fly. It's all I ever wanted to do."

Although Brian is back in the cockpit, he still has to
go through stringent medical exams each year to stay on flying status. That's
because the injuries to his limbs make him highly susceptible to degenerative
arthritis.

But for Udell, who had graduated at the top of his undergraduate
pilot training class and had a strong resume package into the Thunder-birds
before the crash, flying is no longer number one in his life. His first
son was born while he labored through rehab. Their second son came just
a few months ago. Kristi's strength, along with Morgan, 18 months old, and
Garrett, 3 months, and the eye-opening effect of the accident, have changed
his priorities.

"When I clung onto that raft for dear life, I wasn't
thinking about flying again or drinking beer with my buddies," he said.
"I prayed to God that he would let me see my wife again, and be there
when my child was born."

In the hospital room during his first son's birth, Morgan's
head just made its way out into the world when he opened his eyes and looked
up at his dad for the first time. Udell's eyes welled up.

An answered prayer.

Prologue: Nearly two years after this was written, Brian Udell is still flying F-15E Strike Eagles.